Climatic Change-Up

I’m not a fan of baseball, either to play (too slow) or to watch (really too slow), but over its 150-year-plus history its enthusiasts have generated an interesting lexicon.  A change-up pitch, as I learned from my more learned colleagues, is a slower-than-expected pitch that fools a batter into swinging early.  In a mix metaphors, [...]

NTD TD

While viewing audience for the upcoming Souper-duper Bowl is likely to exceed 100 million, 16 times more people are afflicted with the world’s most disabling and disfiguring diseases, the “neglected tropical diseases” (NTDs).  These 1.6 billon and another 2 billion people at risk of infection are the target audience for last Monday’s “Uniting to Combat [...]

Too Big to Flail

In the biotech world, the acquisition of a company by another is an occasional but newsworthy event since it typically means that the acquired company has succeeded in creating sufficient value that an acquirer is willing to pony up significant cash (and/or stock) to buy out the acquired company’s founders and investors (e.g., Takeda’s recent [...]

Window Dressing

Last week on October 26, a new organization was launched that will accelerate the development of new treatments for global health, or so it was said.  With much fanfare (and a webcast), WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), one of the 16 specialized agencies of the United Nations (whose hyperbolic tagline is “Encouraging Creativity [...]

Beyond the Band-Aid

I was recently contacted by an Andrew Paul of the UK, alerting me to the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases, a global health organization he has founded, and its inaugural congress (ISNTD) (thanks for finding my blog, Andrew).  As I understand it from the group’s website and his email, the goal of the Society [...]

Checking the Pool’s Temperature

As my regular readers know, I have written several times on the concept of open source innovation for the discover and development of the products for neglected diseases (e.g., posts of 10/5/09, 8/5/10, 3/10/11) and about one of the more important efforts to make this concept reality:  the Pool for Open Innovation Against Neglected Tropical [...]

Skin in the Game

The recent announcement that the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics, Inc. (CFFT), and Vertex, the well-established biotech company, had extended their collaboration to find “correctors” of the genetic defect underlying cystic fibrosis (defective transmembrance conductance regulator proteins, Vertex press release) got me thinking about the need for better business development efforts by organizations developing treatments for [...]

Open Source Sesame

One concept for accelerating the development of drugs for neglected diseases (i.e., those whose treatment is not reimbursed by insurance companies) is application of the “open source” innovation model which originated the software industry.  This model is based on easy access to source code, distributed work among unaffiliated programmers, and rights to use (and sell) [...]

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime (or Five)?

Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) is a catchall phrase attached to a group of parasitic and bacterial infections that plague many parts of the world but can and have been treated successfully by a combination of public health control measures and inexpensive drugs.  The NTDs, typically listed as the helminth infections (ascariasis, hookworm infection, and trichuriasis), [...]